Finishing has always been my nemesis...and that remains true. The perfect finish would be fast, easy, non-toxic, and applicable without spray equipment. This does not exist--or perhaps I am too good an idiot for anything to be truly idiot proof. After much gnashing of teeth I settled MTN 94 rattle cans for color, and General Finishes Satin Clear, applied with a foam brush as clear coat. Grain filled but did not seal.
This worked great on the neck. Started with 220, and sanded down to 7000, then finished with car wax.
The idea with the body was to do something similar...Solid color top to cover all problems with veneer and holes around the bridge. Natural back and sides. I was a bit more nervous with the body so I used a little 220, but switched pretty quickly to 400...and that is as far as I have gotten, because I ran into a problem...
I did a test piece of pine, and the headstock without incident--which seems to have made me overconfident. My test piece was flat. The headstock was mostly flat, and where it was curved, there was already some finish on the neck. What I should have been thinking, however was about road signs...
ES type guitars have all those beautiful curves. The hardest place for me to level on this is at the base of the curves. Unfortunately, when I was finishing off with 400, I was concentrating too much on the base of the curve, and not enough on the top. So, on the lower horn, I sanded through the clearcoat at the top of the curve. So I had a spot about 2cm at it's largest, with color (fortunately I did not sand through that), but no clearcoat.
So I have put two more coats of clearcoat on the lower horn. Will do at least two or three more. The can says 2-3 should be enough... I think I had 10 coats on and still managed to sand through.
The MTN 94 lays down lots of solids. It does not look great when it goes on, but sands beautifully flat. It feels thin, but is actually reasonably thick. I am pretty happy with it. It's also acrylic...so less toxic...and it fills and sticks nicely even to bare wood.
I worried more about the clearcoat. Also acrylic (which I like), and cure time much shorter than oils. However it does not level all that well, so there are steaks to sand out when applied with a brush. I worried I'd go through it on the bare wood--but that went fine. I worried I would go through it near the binding, but that went fine. I was not that worried that I would go through it in the middle of the top, because I put 10+ coats on to have enough to sand flat over the color...and that was my undoing.
Hopefully this will be fixable relatively easily... but the waiting now begins again, while I wait for the finish to dry. <insert heavy sigh here>
Reply With Quote